Immigration Laws and Policies Since the (1980s) - The Immigratioin Reform And Controlact Of 1986 (irca), Immigration Marriage Fraudamendments Of 1986, The Immigration Act Of 1990 (immact) - BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
Remember, remember always, that all of us … are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
In "Immigration: Shaping and Reshaping America" (Population Bulletin 58, no. 2, June 2003), Philip Martin and Elizabeth Midgley point out that before the 1980s, U.S. immigration laws might have changed once in a generation, but the quickening pace of global change since 1980 brought major new immigration legislation in 1986, 1990, and 1996. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks led to antiterrorism laws that had considerable impact on immigration policies and procedures, and that effected changes to immigration legislation. This chapter covers the most significant immigration laws from the 1980s to 2005.
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
On October 30, 2000, Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (PL 106-395), granting automatic U.S. citizenship to foreign-born biological and adopted children of American citizens. In a November 19, 2004, press release the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that since January 2004 more than 13,000 Certificates of Citizenship had been issued to children from eighty-two countries who had been adopted by U.S. citizens.
Additional Topics
On November 6, 1986, after thirty-four years with no new major immigration legislation and a six-year effort to send an acceptable bill through both houses of Congress, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA; PL 99-603) was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. IRCA tried to resolve the following problems: To control illegal immigration IRCA adopted three major strategies: Two …
Prior to 1986 the INS granted permanent residence fairly quickly to the foreign spouses of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents (LPRs). However, a number of marriages between American citizens or LPRs and foreigners occurred in order to attain U.S. permanent residence status for the foreigner. Some American citizens or LPRs agreed to marry aliens for money. After the alien gained permanent …
It took six years of commitment and negotiation to pass the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Almost as soon as that law was passed, Senators Edward Kennedy (a Democrat from Massachusetts) and Alan Simpson (a Republican from Wyoming) began work to change the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (PL 89-236), which determined legal immigration into the United States. Senators Ke…
Under Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA; PL 104-193)—also called the Welfare Reform Law—federal welfare benefits for legal immigrants were cut substantially and the responsibility for public assistance was shifted from the federal government to the states. (Illegal immigrants were already ineligible for most major welfare …
On September 30, 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA; PL 104-208) became law. In an effort to reduce illegal
immigration, IIRIRA included the following among its many provisions: By 2001 the INS reported approximately 8,400 agents guarding America's borders—400 assigned to the 4,000-mile northern border and 8,000 assigned to the 2,000-mile s…
In January 2005 the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Web site stated, "A 'green card' gives you official immigration status (Lawful Permanent Residency) in the United States." A lawful permanent resident (LPR) carries that document as proof of legal status in the country. Yet, the card is not green. What we know as a "green card" came in a variety of diffe…
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it became apparent that some, if not all, of the perpetrators had entered the United States legally and many had overstayed their allotted time with no notice taken by the INS or any other enforcement agency. Since then several laws have been passed or proposed and policy changes have been implemented to address immigration concerns. The first…
On November 25, 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (PL 107-296), a document totaling nearly five hundred pages that represented the largest restructuring of the government in several decades. The Homeland Security Act created the cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS). "The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face th…
Since September 11, 2001, hundreds of policy changes have been inaugurated by the Department of Justice, the INS, and its successor the USCIS. In November 2001 the U.S. Department of State issued directives mandating background checks on all male visa applicants between the ages of sixteen and forty-five from twenty-six mostly Muslim countries. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Ac…
On December 17, 2004, President George W. Bush signed into law the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (PL 108-408). This new law set national standards for driver's licenses, Social Security cards, and birth certificates. The law required the Secretary of Transportation to issue within eighteen months regulations governing any driver's license or identity cards …
In a January 11, 2005, interview with Joseph Curl of the Washington Times, President George W. Bush said he would spend political capital to push his proposal to grant temporary work visas to foreign workers as long as U.S. workers would not or did not want to fill the job ("Bush Vows Push on Immigration," January 12, 2005). Estimating the number of illegal aliens in the country at e…
The U.S. government was aggressive in its pursuit of terrorism suspects. The Justice Department reported that in the year following the September 11 attacks, approximately 1,200 aliens were apprehended (Allison Parker and Jamie Fellner, Above the Law: Executive Power after September 11 in the United States, Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, January 2004). More than 700 were confined on immigrati…
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